The City Below (2 page)

"No. I ain't afraid to say that. I've spent thirty years building what I have. You think I just hand it over, you got shit for brains." McCarthy turned as he spoke, covering the act of reaching inside his coat. "What sparks this, Guido? The fucking union vote? The union vote don't mean a damn."

"Except as a sign of the times, Brian. You know what's happened in Providence and New York."

"Boston's different, always has been. Separate turf, that's the rule here. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."

"Until now. On the water, on the harbor—action goes through one organization. One juice collection from the ships, one loader's fence, one distribution."

"Yours."

"I said that"

"You said it, yeah."

"Then you understand."

"The question is, do I agree?"

"Yes."

"You've got some fucking nerve. Do you know that?"

"Brian, Brian. I've come here myself, against advice, to give you a chance. Between the two of us we could make the adjustment smooth. We are old men. The young ones have not seen what we have seen, how bad it goes when—"

"Forget it, Guido."

"You would be my
capo.
"

"Your flunky. Your hack."

Tucci shook his head mournfully. "Do not do this."

"This?" McCarthy began pulling his gun. "This?" A primitive urge carried McCarthy forward, as if to push the bastard backwards into the oily water. "This?" He showed the gun.

McCarthy had made his move so swiftly that he was on Tucci before seeing the flash of the knife—it came from Tucci's sleeve, one of those arms he had so willingly held up for Burke. The blade was visible only for an instant, until it disappeared in its ample new sheath, McCarthy's own stomach. Jesus.

McCarthy's last sensations were the unforgiving crunch of the cement against his face and the roar of a motor in his ears. He had life enough to realize that Tucci would make his escape now in some dago's souped-up speedboat, swirling into and out of the channel, out to the harbor, across to Eastie or the North End. Two if by sea, the fucks.

***

In quick order, in the days following, even before Easter, McCarthy's chieftains in Southie, Savin Hill, and Fields Corner, in Union Square and Winter Hill in Somerville, were eliminated, all but one in public executions calculated to make a point. The takeover, to succeed, had to be swift and brutal. If the Italians, for their part, misjudged the Irish, it was in assuming they would need a hope of victory before putting up a fight. The old-country Irish impulse was to make their defiance at least as brutal as it was futile, and that spring and summer they did.

Guido Tucci's nephew was run down on North Washington Street, coming out of Polcari's. Afterward the mick driver stopped, got out of his car, went back, and, in front of the young man's mother, Tucci's sister, cut off his ear and threw it at the woman's feet.

With no overt warning, killings became rampant in the areas where Irish and Italian neighborhoods overlapped: Dorchester, Somerville, Chelsea, and Everett. The two Irish peninsulas, Southie and Charlestown, because of their geographical isolation, were the most concerned but the least affected. The murders spilled over into downtown, into Scollay Square, and even, three times, the Common. At first every lurid slaying—a corpse thrown from a sedan at Farragut's statue, a restaurant owner shot through the eye amid the bright morning crowds of Haymarket, a fish handler drowned in a holding tank on Rowes Wharf—hit the front pages, often with photographs. But eventually the press, the police, and the citizenry itself became inured. The violence continued into the fall.

Old Boston was confirmed in its most cherished views of both peoples, the Irish and the Italians. The closed systems of Boston's caste society and the city's economic stratification were at last justified by the primitive blood lust of those who'd been kept out. Their viciousness shocked even those whose disdain had been absolute. Corpses showed up in the cold-storage vaults of the waterfront, a naked flogged body was found hanging from a light fixture in the workers' bathroom at the Park Street station. See how the Catholics kill one another. To the denizens of Back Bay and Beacon Hill, the gang war was proof that the long-held attitudes for which they'd been so ridiculed were perfectly true. The City on the Hill had fallen to men of no virtue, and was ruined.

***

One day in May of 1960, a year after Guido Tucci had murdered Deebo McCarthy, a pair of dark-eyed, slick-haired punks came into the Kerry Bouquet, a flower store across the street from the Charlestown Common, on the lower slope of Bunker Hill.

Ned Cronin, in the corner by the ivy trellis, sized them up without lifting his head. He was a large, white-headed Irishman with a reddish nose, the same age as the century. He had the build of a scrapper, but, as the flower king of the Town, he spent most of his time with women, the parish biddies and nuns who kept him in business. So the arrival of the toughs drew his absolute attention.

He had been making one of his trademark shamrock boutonnieres, and when the two came in, he redoubled his focus, knotting a wire, yet watching them. One wore a shiny black suit, a lilac shirt, and a tie a deeper shade of purple; the other wore an argyle sweater with red and blue diamonds against a field of cream. The sweater had suede lapels, one of which the man cockily fingered.

"What'll it be, fellows?" Cronin looked up, letting his glasses slide toward the end of his nose. He held his concoction delicately between thumb and forefinger, four shamrocks and a spray of baby's breath, held together with wire. The shamrock lapel flowers were silly things Ned had put together one St. Patrick's Day, but Townies liked them, and he could always sell whatever he made.

The pair ignored him to make a show of inspecting the shop. The one in the suit was an unwashed, pimply version of a rock 'n' roll crooner, that ducktail, the lithe jittery body of a car thief. With exaggerated nods at each separate bunch of irises, tulips, and carnations, he took a series of audible whiffs—in contrast to the other, who grimaced as he pushed the foliage aside, giving off the authentic, pungent air of anarchy, a stink of it.

Cronin tilted back in his chair. He picked up a can of artist's fixative and sprayed the shamrocks. Even when shellacked, they would last only an evening. He put the can and boutonniere aside, to rest his shoulders against the ornate brass cash register. In all these years he had never been robbed. He could feel the baroque relief pattern of the brass cash drawer through his shirt Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, now what?

"How can I help you, pal?" Cronin addressed himself to the one in the sharkskin suit. But anxiety had pushed its way into his voice. He heard it himself, knew they would, and he wanted to curse.

But Squire must have heard it too.

Cronin's grandson, and his chum Jackie Mullen, came out of the back room. They'd been putting together wreaths for a funeral. Each one wore dungarees and a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Squire, one of Cronin's two grandsons, was his after-school helper, a lanky kid with slick red hair combed in a modest but unmistakable pompadour. A bridge of dirt crossed his nose where he'd rubbed it with his hand. Despite the ominous presence of the Italians, he stood easily on the threshold, lighting the room with his habitual grin, a boy born to bring flowers.

Mullen was harder to read. A shy, cautious boy, he'd hit his stride the previous autumn as a fullback. He was strong and unafraid, but those qualities alarmed Cronin as he saw the sour expression on Jackie's face.

Cronin saw his grandson move his left hand behind his leg. The lad was still holding the curved blade he'd been using to trim stems.

Cronin thought back to the K of C gala the year before, when he himself had been raised to the Fourth Degree. As a joke, in the cathedral hall where the beer was flowing after the ceremony, he had brought the flat of his new Eminent Commander's sword down on Nick's shoulder and dubbed him Squire, his second in battle, his armor polisher and weapons carrier. They love a nickname in Charlestown, and "Squire" had stuck. Now the kid was standing there so bravely with that blade, as if about to leap to his old grandpa's defense. Knight's squire indeed.

"We've come for the dues," the pimply face said.

Cronin found it possible to smile, as if this were repartee down at the Flower Exchange, but he could not summon the response that would make the situation funny. With a weary grunt he stood, grateful to find that he was taller than the intruders. "Dues? What club?"

"New merchants' association. You know about it"

"No, I don't believe I do."

Squire was smiling in a friendly way, but as concealment. His hand had tightened around the cork handle of his hidden knife. His eye moved from his grandfather to the strangers and back.

It was Squire to whom Mullen kept looking for a signal. His hands were flexing and unflexing, wanting the ball. When Squire sensed Jackie's eagerness, he hid the knife from him too. The knife took over Squire's mind. What would it be like to slash at the pimples on that one's face?

"Twenty a week," the Italian said. "Beginning today. And for your money, you get a smooth operation, guaranteed."

"Thanks. I already have a smooth operation." Cronin turned to Squire and Jackie. With an impatient flip of the fingers of both hands, like the monsignor shooing altar boys, he gestured them toward the back room. But neither Squire nor Jackie moved.

Without warning, the acne-faced one leapt at Cronin, grabbed his shirt, and smashed his face with a chopping punch. The old man's nose immediately gushed blood, and he crumpled. The Italian's fist was bound in a set of brass knuckles.

Mullen charged forward, but the second thug hit him from the side. The blow landed on his cheekbone with a dull
thunk,
another brass sucker punch. Mullen went down, coldcocked.

Squire used the hatred he felt as fuel for an act of deep memorization. One face, then the other—the bastard who'd decked his grandfather. He dropped the trimmer's knife into the potted plant behind him. Without a glance at Jackie or Cronin, he walked to the cash register. He rang up No Sale; the drawer popped open. "Twenty, you said?" And he held out two tens.

The one with the acne released Cronin, who fumbled for his handkerchief. The punk crossed to Squire and snatched the bills. "We'll be back once a week, get it?"

"Yes, sir. You bet."

The punk stuffed the bills in his trousers pocket and turned to a bucket of carnations. He snapped off a flower and put it in his lapel buttonhole, a trophy. "How much for the rose?"

"No charge," Squire said.

Jackie looked up at his friend with shame and disappointment. The guy who'd hit him still stood over Mullen, fist cocked. The other was turning to lead the way out when Squire, still at the register, said, "Does this mean we don't have to pay the other guys?"

The two looked at Squire.

"I mean, you take care of them for us now, right?"

The Italians exchanged a glance. The suit said, "What other guys?"

"Mr. Triozzi," Squire answered. "He said not to tell his name, but it's okay for you to know, right? What's your name?"

"Triozzi?"

"He said he was somebody's cousin. Weirdo, or something."

"Guido?"

"Yeah, that's it. Guido. Guido Tucci. That's what he said. He's Guido Tucci's cousin."

Again the two looked at each other, but now the one in the sweater flashed with anger, and his partner muttered defensively in Italian. In three broad strides, he crossed back to the cash register and slapped the twenty dollars down, then turned and left the store. His comrade followed, whining, "Goddamnit, Mano, I told you—" Then they were gone.

Mano. Squire repeated the name to himself.

Ned Cronin took one last swipe with his handkerchief. He brushed the remains of the shamrock boutonniere from his shirt, then joined his grandson in helping Mullen to his feet.

"Triozzi?" Cronin asked. "Who the hell is Triozzi?"

When Squire did not answer, Cronin realized what his grandson had done. He looked nervously toward the door, then back at his daughter's kid. "You made that up? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you made that up?" A grin slowly overspread Cronin's face. With amazement and disbelief, he repeated, "You made that up?"

Still Squire did not answer.

Cronin grasped his grandson's forearm. "You had me fooled too. I thought there must of been some guy come in here while I—"

Squire was looking at his grandfather with rare solemnity.

"How did you know what name to mention?"

"Triozzi." Squire shrugged. "It's the wop name that popped into my head."

"They wouldn't of believed you if you'd just said Tucci, if you hadn't played so dumb. 'Weirdo'! You said 'Weirdo'!" Cronin laughed.

"I'm sorry the guy hit you, Gramps. I'm sorry I just stood there."

Cronin pressed Squire's arm. Of course, the kid
hadn't
just stood there, which was the point now. "Hell, I'm okay." He turned to Mullen. "You're the one who took the crack, Jackie."

"The wop bastard." Mullen's cheekbone was aflame, the hollow under his eye already mousing up. His fingers jittered at his face.

Cronin wanted to shake the stunned Mullen: Didn't you see what Squire just did here?

Squire picked up the bills from the register. "Here's your twenty back, Gramps."

"That's yours, kid." Cronin laughed again and pushed his grandson's hand away. "That's protection money, and you're my protection now. Wait'll the boys at the Exchange hear what you did."

"No, Gramps." Squire spoke with grave authority. "You shouldn't talk it up. Not at the Exchange and not here in the Town. We should let it sit for a while. We should find out who else these guys have hit
Them
we talk to. We tell
them
about Triozzi. We treat Triozzi like he's real. One by one, we sign up the other stores on Main and on the square."

"And the fellas at the Exchange—"

"No, Gramps. Just Charlestown. We keep this thing in the Town. Marin, O'Brien, Jocko—the ones we trust. But we all treat Triozzi like he's real. Get it?"